But She's Alive
by Exceeds Expectations
Summary: She knows it couldn't possibly end well but still she cuts her legs to ribbons so that when the harsh winter winds blow, she can feel that icy kiss on her wounds and remember that she still breathes.


**A/N: **This is for s8trgrlhinata's _Issues _Competition. I was given Cho and self-harm so be warned.

I'm not particularly happy with this. I don't know if it came out right. So please review and tell me what you think!

* * *

**i. decorate your body with the gift of knife-side kisses**

It starts in winter.

The trees are black and lifeless and the sky is hoarding snow in clouds of blinding white. The air is sharp and Cho walks against the wind when she can. It helps to keep pushing, to push against the wind, to push against the snow, to push against herself.

Cedric's been dead for six months.

Everywhere she looks, everyone seems to have forgotten him. No one meets her eyes anymore. No one except- except-

_Him. Harry._

But he's got too much to worry about and not enough time to save them all and maybe she should find another way to remember Cedric, another way to feel _alive _again._  
_  
She knows it's wrong. She knows she should stop this and she knows it couldn't possibly end well but still she cuts her legs to ribbons so that when the harsh winter winds blow, she can feel that icy kiss on her wounds and remember that she still breathes.

(She wishes she could stop, but it hurts so much that it reminds her she can feel. So she keeps cutting, keeps slicing, keeps slitting, and -so no one will notice- keeps smiling.)

* * *

**ii. give yourself tattoos that remind you how you've failed**

He used to tell her they'd have forever. She wonders if he meant it, if he'd still be there if he'd never been taken from her, if she'd never had noticed Harry's bright eyes.

"_Love me forever, Cho," he_ used to breathe into her neck. She'd nod and smile and lock their future away in her heart.

She tries so hard, so very hard, but his face is fading day by day and Harry looks at her when she walks past and she knows he could understand if only she would talk to him.

It's been so long since someone looked her in the eyes.

(And sometimes a blade just isn't enough.)

Cho remembers the days when Cedric would run his hands along her hips and leave fire trails on her skin. _So long ago, _she thinks. It's been so long since someone touched her, since someone _needed_ her, since someone made her feel those flames on her skin.

So she clasps her wand between her bony fingers and stares into her own dark and hollow eyes in the mirror. From the corner of her eyes, she sees the wand tip burst into flame, the fire dancing just outside her line of vision, so beautiful, so perfect. With shaking hands, she lowers her arm and runs the wand along her hip ever so slowly, whispering to Cedric all the while.

_If I close my eyes, if I just close my eyes…you're here._

Her skin bubbles and blisters and burns, and the stench of scorching flesh fills her nostrils, but Cho does not stop until his initials are burnt into her hip.

And it's like one last, twisted touch.

* * *

**iii. carve his name into your heart with old and rusted blades**

This thing with Harry, it teaches her one thing: she's not ready to move on. She runs her fingers over the scarred flesh of her left hip, swirling around the crude _C_ and along the straight edge of the _D _and she imagines all the letters that should have been in between, all the words that she could have written there, but didn't.

She imagines the things she wanted to say, the words she wanted to slip from her mouth to his without need for vocal chords or soft sighs. She thinks of all the _I love you_s and all the _forever_s and maybe, just maybe, they're there on her skin as well, tucked in behind his memory and the criss-crossing scars on her thighs.

She wonders when they'll fade. Surely they will.

_They'll never go, Cho, you'll never be perfect, never pretty._

And then she thinks of his name scrawled across her heart.

_Never whole._

* * *

**iv. stop**

The war ends and she watches everyone else pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. It's only when she sees the others crying, when she sees the falling tears that scream of all the pain and anguish, that Cho realises she's not alone. Maybe she's never been alone.

Somewhere along the way, between burying friends and building a future, Cho begins to heal. It's not that she forgets Cedric (no, _never_) but it's that she sees what Cedric would have seen. She looks at her scars and her burns and she sees herself; torn apart, broken, _ruined_.

But it's okay, she tells herself, because all the scars and burns and pain just mean that she's survived.

She's alive.

* * *

**v. relapse?**

When it all gets too much for Cho, she strips. She locks herself away, tears at her clothes and curls up on the floor. She stretches her palm flat across her thigh and begins.

She counts ever scar, every cut, every line. She counts every burn, every scorch mark, every piece of skin that once bubbled and charred. She counts every mark, every blemish, every flaw, and she only stops when the numbers lose all meaning.

And then she thinks of being happy.

And, sometimes, it works.


End file.
